In the period between 1972 and 1976, Vidyadhara Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche developed a training program that eventually was called
"Mudra Space Awareness". The Mudra approach developed parallel to the
Maitri Space Awareness Practice. Just as Maitri addressed concerns of
mental health practitioners, Mudra related to the central issues of theater,
which he broadly defined to include performance art, dance, "body work",
music, visual arts, design principles.

Currently, Mudra Space Awareness is being extended to
relate to group process and organizational development methodologies.
The exercises are also being applied more generally by practitioners as
tools to establish continuity between formal meditation practices and
worldly situations.

Apart from an historic theater workshop held in Colorado
in 1972 and other informal gatherings held afterwards, the Vidyadhara
never presented his teachings on Mudra in public settings. Very little
was recorded. He gave out exercises to small practice groups in Boulder,
Berkeley and New York City. They met as often as three times per week
and occasionally held public performances. After being invited periodically
to observe practice sessions, Rinpoche offered comments and responded
to questions. This commentary, over time, resulted in a body of work that
only much later seemed to constitute a coherent set of teachings. They
were never known to most members of the Vajradhatu or Shambhala sangha.

These comments are recollections from my own personal
contact with the practice. I worked with space awareness as a member of
the Berkeley-based Mudra group in the 1970’s, as a Naropa Institute
instructor, and as a workshop leader who traveled throughout North America
to introduce the practice to Dharmadhatus. In June of 1995, after a 19-year
gap, I began working with these teachings again in a small space awareness
practice group in Seattle and once again began conducting workshops. Several
other teachers who worked with the Vidydhara in the early years also continue
to conduct workshops.

INFLUENCES

The Vidyadhara drew upon three influences to create
these exercises.

Monastic Dance: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche became
acquainted with dance training when he was the young abbot of Surmang
monasteries in Eastern Tibet. By separating the principles of this dance
training from its iconographic forms, he conveyed to his Western students
the underlying meaning of the training and related it to contemporary
theatre approaches.

Western Theatre: Mudra also resulted from his
interactions with an international network of experimental theater directors
and actors. The early 70’s was a period of great Renaissance in
international theater. Several of the path breaking directors, playwrights
were able to see the relevance of Buddhism to their work much earlier
than those in other professions. For example, Grotowski (in Poland) and
Brook (in Paris) were exploring the concept of "monastic dance". To them,
the function of theater was not to entertain but to transform the audience.
In New York, Experimental theater groups, such as the Open Theater and
Living Theater, were shaking up conventions by exploring ways to break
through the separation between actor and audience. Performance artists
such as Merideth Monk cut through the audience’s expectations to
achieve a non-conceptual perception of sound, sight and movement. Rinpoche
made a particular impression on the principals of New York City’s
Open Theater, much as Joe Chaiken, Jean-Claude Van Itallie and Lee Worley.
Ms. Worley later worked with Rinpoche’s teachings on theater and
space awareness in Naropa’s theater program which she steadfastly
developed over many years.

Meditation-in-Action: Meditation in action was
a dominant theme of Rinpoche’s early teachings and the title of
his first popular book. He challenged his students to extend the principles
of meditation into ordinary everyday situations. Rinpoche also considered
the arts to be vehicles for achieving continuous awareness. His teachings
on flower arrangement, calligraphy, Kyudo, all reflect the themes that
are developed in the direct-perception exercises of Mudra Space Awareness.

THE PRINCIPLES

After reflecting on the experience of Mudra many years,
I discern several principles of the practice. It will be easier to understand
these principles after actually doing the exercises. They are summarized
below.

1. To achieve
a fresh experience of an everyday activity, it is useful to slow it down,
break it into its component parts, and then reconstruct it in a laboratory-like
setting.

Any form of "doing" –-- walking, talking, watching
television, -- can be a vehicle for awareness of direct experience, or
it can draw us away from direct experience in a way that is dictated by
habit. Normally, the purposefulness or frivolity associated with everyday
activities seduce our attention and lead us away from direct perception.
We fail to relate to the distinct structure of our sensory experience
during the activity. In other words, we take the activity for granted.
Our attention extends beyond the activity to what it might do for us.

By breaking everyday experience into its component parts,
and then seeing how these parts fit together, we can begin to appreciate
the intrinsic nature of the activity. The activity becomes freed to express
itself. We can re-claim the activity on its own terms.

2. Proper
"doing" involves establishing a "light touch" relationship with whatever
is in the center of our experience. We can establish this light touch
by drawing our attention to the periphery.

In sitting meditation, the breath is the reference point.
In other activities, the reference point changes. In walking, it is stepping.
In eating, it is chewing. In each activity, the reference point can be
made into a vehicle for awareness. The key is to relate with each reference
point with a light touch. In sitting meditation we are instructed to breath
with a light touch -- no more than 25% of our attention.

Similarly, in walking meditation, we relate to stepping
just as we relate to breath in sitting. That doesn’t mean that we
should exhale with our feet. It means that stepping draws only a quarter
of our total attention. The rest of our perception is devoted to the total
context that surrounds each step, the space around it . The fact that
most of your awareness is not attending to stepping does not mean that
you will fall down. The opposite is true: each step becomes more secure.
At the same time, the larger meaning of the experience of walking dawns
on us. Stepping can be used as a trigger to wake up one’s total
sensory experience. Thus, center and periphery are put in balance.

3. By becoming
on intimate terms with the workings of each of the sense fields, we can
more easily maintain awareness amid activity.

Our senses are not just body organs that correspond
to objects "out there". They are fields of awareness, each with its own
intrinsic structure, each with its distinct way of conveying meaning.
But normally our communication with the sense fields is quite restricted,
Typically our senses are forced to work on ego’s terms. For example,
while we are walking we fixate with our eyes because it helps us maintain
balance and it masks our fear of falling. The effect is not just to wipe
out the panoramic nature of the visual field but also to destroy subtle
impressions of sound, touch and smell. Thus, we forget what every child
knows: how to relate to our senses on their own terms. The space awareness
exercises can give us direct experience into seeing, hearing, touching,
tasting. They convey a vocabulary for speaking about the peculiar interplay
of forms and space that takes place in each of the sense fields. This
knowledge is the first step towards developing a new sensibility. The
exercises show us how to release the sense fields rather than hold them
in a tight and mean-spirited grip.

As we move from one activity to another a different
sense field may move to center stage; other sense fields fall into the
periphery. The challenge at that point is to withstand being seduced into
putting too much of our attention to the center of our experience. Sometimes,
it’s almost impossible. For example, consider what happens when
you watch Schwartzenegger action films. They draw upon the full possibilities
of technology to concentrate 100% of our attention on the reference point
(the film content) in order to establish our full involvement in the illusion
on the screen. Perhaps such films should only be watched by advanced space
awareness practitioners who know how to keep their presence in the midst
of such powerful seduction. And, even then, they should be assigned to
carefully taste each piece of popcorn while watching!

4. Awareness
of sense fields is also the key to creativity.

The point of Mudra space awareness training isn’t
just to resist Hollywood producers and other local deities who would wish
to destroy our awareness A larger purpose is to help us to become creative.
By enabling us to transcend habitual ways of using our senses, we discover
how to draw directly from the raw material of our senses and respond to
our experience through creative gesture.

The first step towards creativity is to understand that
our expression does not exist in a vacuum. Even before we act, there is
already a lot going on. All of it fresh. All of it unique. But that doesn’t
mean that we have to be so awestruck by the phenomenal world that we are
cowed into silence. Knowing when to act and how to act depends to a great
degree on being open to – and responding to – what our own
sense fields are "saying" at a given moment. Being spontaneous means simply
answering back.

Those who are skillful in improvisation in music or
dance say their actions are merely dictated by the structure of their
experience. Space awareness shows us that the same is true for ordinary
experience. Spontaneity is not wildness. It is taking responsibility for
what is already there. It means making gestures that reflect the up-to-date
sensory content of each moment.

5. Total involvement
is the key to developing the proper motive.

Though many of us romanticize a state of being open
to the full play of our senses, in fact our relationship to our sense
is based on deep-seated ambivalence. Ambivalence is based on not fully
wanting to be at any given point. We may feel we need to drive the car,
bur we don’t want to do it totally. Any activity that involves us
100% is threatening because it removes the ground of ego. We have no place
to hang out, no snug cocoon.

This is why space awareness exercises have an outrageous
quality. They demand total involvement. They are not for everybody, particularly
not for dharma-ridden practitioners who insist on keeping their spirituality
in a little box.

6. Letting
go of purposefulness requires trusting space.

Purposelessness is an important part of Mudra. Without
abandoning our practical needs, we should cultivate a sense that each
activity is valid in its own right, not just as a way of getting from
point A to point B. But how to achieve purposelessness? One way is to
trust space. Our need to constantly adhere to a goal orientation is based
in part on our fear of space. So, in Mudra, a challenge for the practitioner
is to expose themselves to experiences where they are called upon to trust
space. In physical postures, for example, one can experience space as
substantial and capable of actually holding up one’s body

7. Tension
equals relaxation.

Normally most of us are trying to flee states of tension
and find states of relaxation. But in Mudra, tension and relaxation two
sides of the same coin and in some sense they are equal. Normally, in
the neurotic state, the body represents a patchwork of points of relaxation
and points of tension. The two work together to create a sense of cocoon
in which the self is experienced as separate from other. Mudra exercises
that work with physical postures build a state or total intensification
or total relaxation. In either case, the aim is to overcome the ambivalent
interplay of tension and relaxation. When the practitioners are fully
relaxed or fully tensed they feel much the same way because the involvement
is total.

8. Awareness
requires generosity.

Awareness requires giving up "this" and opening to "that."
By opening your heart, it becomes possible to open the gateway of the
senses. As the eyes loosen their grip on reality, space is created that
creates room for smell, touch, and hearing. We are more apt to appreciate
the style of other persons, rather than demand that they conform to our
expectations. Thus, compassion and space awareness are inseparable.

THE EXERCISES

Mudra space awareness is group practice. Rinpoche never
encouraged students to do the exercises individually – perhaps because
of their intensity. Each member takes turn leading the exercises, called
"shadowing". Each shadow offers his or her own interpretation of each
exercise and there is room for broad interpretation of how each exercise
should be led.

The exercises are of four types:

1. Guided sitting meditations: Sifting can be
part of space awareness practice. Guided meditations may be given by a
leader who takes practitioners through a careful exploration of sense
fields, an examination of the sensory composition of the breath, and the
experience of body.

2. Body Work: Various exercises work with "intensification"
in specific postures, followed by "relaxation".

Intensification involves drawing upon your imagination
to conceive of space crowding in around your body and your body mounting
opposition. The body tenses all muscles. Psychologically as well as physically,
one develops total engagement until there is seamless, nonfluctuating
experience of total solidity, thus "intensification". Generally, this
experience is worked up from the feet up through the head.

After a few minutes, at shadow’s direction, the
practitioner lets go of intensification and abruptly switches into total
relaxation (without altering the posture in any way.) This is the flip-side
of intensification, or "relaxation." It is experienced by consciously
letting go of any fixation associated with body or mind. Often it is worked
up from the feet to the head as before. It generally lasts for about two
to seven minutes.

Often intensification/relaxation exercises are associated
with movement. For example, it is possible to do walking meditation while
intensified or relaxed.

In some cases, specific body parts are intensified while
others are not. In one exercise, called "cutting through", the right arm
takes the form of a blade while the left arm is soft like a feather. The
right arm extends in a circle, eventually making contact with the soft
left arm.

3. Exercises specific to a sense field: Some
excises have been developed to bring out a awareness of (and generate
creative responses to ) specific sense fields. For example, one visual
exercise is called "scanning." It can be conducted while seated or standing.
It involves moving the visual field as a whole very slowly in a 180 degree
of 360 degree rotation. Various sound exercises have been developed to
examine the sound field, work with the sound of one’s voice. "Sound
cycles" were developed by the Vidyadhara as a way of helping the speaker
understand the intrinsic meaning of vowels and to understand the interplay
of sound and content. Some exercises work directly with musical instruments.

4. Group Interactions: Some exercises are explicitly
designed for group interactions. Such as "weaving" which involves walking
around members standing in a circle with the aim of experiencing the subtle
interaction that occurs when one’s body comes within proximity of
another body. Other exercises for groups involve placement of objects
or efforts to develop a sense of presence while participating within a
group.

5. Design exercises: Some exercises evoke design
principles. A number have been created to give people direct experience
with heaven, earth and man principles. In some cases, Mudra exercises
have been combined with efforts to understand the Five Buddha Families,
which is a major part of Maitri Space Awareness training. Mudra exercises
have also been combined with efforts to understand Four Karmas and Four
Foundations of Mindfulness.

6. Field trips: Some space awareness work is
conducted out-of-doors or in various types of interior environments, such
as architectural or natural spaces. Field trips could include artistic
performances and in some bases Mudra exercises have been conducted in
public spaces.